We are pondering on Sarah Palin's idea of refudiating both Popper and
Lakatos "at one fell swoop" as she puts it in her Alaskan vernacular, in her
notes, "Refudiations and refudiations" -- a "portmanteau of both Poper's
"Conjectures and refutations" and Lakatos's "Proofs and refutations"".
Was she being _fair_ to Lakatos? Needs Lakatos be refudiated _in the same
manner_ as Popper? Or is Palin's implicature that different _ways_ (if not
senses) of 'refudations' are involved in her original title, "Refudiations
and refudiations'?
In a message dated 10/17/2015 8:20:12 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Lakatos' philosophy of science is really a Hegelian synthesis of a Kuhnian
history-based view of science, as puzzle-solving within a dominant
paradigm that may be overthrown by an incommensurable paradigm as anomalies
increase, and Popper's logic-based view that science be regarded as a product
of
a normative system for evaluation that puts primacy on falsifiability in
the sense of 'falsifiable by observation'. The resulting blend is not very
Popperian at all, and stresses the role of anti-falsificationism [i.e.
evading falsification] as if this is central to most scientific endeavour in a
way that Popper would deny. As Popper's reply to Lakatos in _Schillp_ shows,
Popper did not consider Lakatos a Popperian at all - and Popper goes so far
as to make clear that if Lakatos is right in some of his key claims then
Popper's philosophy of science must be fundamentally mistaken. Popper tries
to explain why Lakatos is not right. So much for Lakatos as a Popperian."
Grice once said, when challenged with his account of "if" clauses as
simplistic: "Hey! My account is NOT one of "if p, THEN q", which SURELY is
inferential in the Strawsonian's way of interpreting this; mine is an account
of
the SIMPLER "if p, [sans then] q" clauses.
McEvoy is Strawsonian and uses then:
"Popper goes so far as to make clear that _IF_ Lakatos is right in some of
his key claims, THEN Popper's philosoophy of science must be fundamentally
mistaken."
Popper's implicature is a tollendo tollens.
For surely he cannot be claiming that he claims that he is mistaken. So, by
negating the consequent of the "if p, q", Popper is REFUDIATING p".
"It was that constant exchange of refudiations of these two authorities
teaching at London," Palin said -- she said "at London" because she thinks 'in
London' sounds "too penetrating" -- "that had me written my notes in the
first place."
"The fact also remains," Sarah Palin explains, "that Popper NOT seeing
Lakatos as a Popperian does not refudiate _Lakatos_ seeing himself as a
Popperian, the way Luther saw himself as a Catholic -- I'm about to see
"Tannhauser" soon hence the theological reference!"
Cheers,
Speranza
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